


A Necessary Silence: Broken

by SonjaJade



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 11:36:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8284432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonjaJade/pseuds/SonjaJade
Summary: After the Promised day, Riza reflects as she recovers on the chaos.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Shadowlight](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/234191) by Lady Norbert. 



The first thing the doctors told Riza was to be quiet as a mouse. They explained to her that though her vocal chords were mostly unharmed, that resting her voice was the best way to ensure her throat and neck healed properly, and to keep the tone and sound of her voice intact.  
  
Despite her silence, she remained ever vigilant about guarding the Colonel she nearly had to murder in the bowels of Central Command. In all the time she’d known him, Riza had never witnessed a fury like that from him. To think that he might have been lost forever to his sadness and rage and unquenchable thirst for revenge against the monster who took his best friend away from him…  
  
And then she thought of the look on his face when the saber slid into her neck and her warm blood burst from her veins. Not all that long ago, she remembered making a very similar face when that homunculus told her Roy was dead. At the time, she had a fleeting thought about how ironic it was that he’d yelled at her for losing her composure that night, when he had completely lost his when the tables were turned.  
  
But now wasn’t the time to remind him of this fact. He was trapped in his own darkness and reliving his own hellish memories, no doubt. If there was anything she could’ve done to get his eye sight back, she would’ve been out of that bed so quickly. As it was, they simply needed time to rest and heal. And no matter how bedridden she was, her sharp gaze would always watch over him.

* * *

  
She didn’t sleep well, even when Roy was silent and seemingly asleep himself. Riza knew he was lying there awake. She knew the sound of his breath, how it sounded when he was focused, how it sounded when he was annoyed, how it sounded when he would drift off at his desk.  
  
At first she thought he might just be uncomfortable in the hospital bed. But knowing him better than the back of her own hand, she knew he was thinking too hard on the past week’s events. And because he was restless, she was as well.  
  
Riza wondered when that had happened, precisely. When did they stop existing as two separate entities and become this matched set that couldn’t function without the other. While she lay awake on the other side of the room, she thought about different points in their shared history together, and of course the answers to her questions always came from their time fighting in Ishval.  
  
The first time Riza saw Roy use flame alchemy to incinerate a group of fleeing young men, an icicle of hatred formed in her heart. The man who told her he had this idyllic dream of using alchemy to save people had been a liar. She bared her back and shared her father’s life long research with him, only for him to turn around and use it as a destructive power, something that stole the breath from living people and burned them until they ceased living.  
  
It didn’t make her own killings any easier. She’d cried in her tent the day she killed her first man. But if she could take out someone with a bullet, that meant one less person dying at the science her father had created. As aloof and withdrawn as Berthold was, he never meant for flame alchemy to be used for this reason.  
  
But her resolve to murder Roy Mustang wavered when she met him face to face on the battlefield. His eyes were cold and a deep sadness loomed behind them. It reminded her of years gone by, when he would sometimes tell her about his mother and father and how he wished there had been something he could have done to bring them back.  
  
His hands spoke words of death and annihilation. His eyes spoke words of desperation and sorrow, crying without tears to be put down like the vicious dog he was. And when he noticed that same look in her eyes, and heard the waver in his voice when he said she too had the eyes of a killer, she forgave him. She could read him like a book. He wanted her to kill him. And knowing that he could have begged her to do it, to free him from this nightmare… She didn’t have it in her to hate him like that anymore.  
  
The day he burned her back, despite the searing pain he inflicted onto her, had been a relief for her. He stopped after four snaps, saying the array was destroyed enough, that he couldn’t bear to hurt her any more than he already had. They cried together, for each other, for themselves, for the people they’d murdered. She couldn’t remember how he got her to the med tent before they packed everything up and left, he insisted she stay with him at his apartment while she recovered so he could care for her. Riza found a nurse to stop by twice a day for a pittance and declined. As far as she was concerned, they’d spent enough time together and it was time to part ways.  
  
But he began calling her. He called regularly and almost like clockwork. He always asked if she needed anything, if she was hungry or needed a ride anywhere. It was like having an overbearing aunt that kept calling with a weather report and to remind you to take your umbrella ‘just in case’. And then came the call that would change everything.  
  
“Will you follow me?” he’d asked her. He explained that he was going to make it right, that he was going to do his best to fix everything he’d done- to the Ishvalans, to the people of Amestris, to his fellow soldiers, to her father’s memory, and to her. He wanted her to keep him in line, to make sure he didn’t falter. He wanted her to be sure he didn’t make the same mistake twice.  
  
Riza had answered that she would follow him into hell. Since that day they rarely spent more than a few hours apart. And now here they were, a man without eyes and a woman without a voice, cohabitating on the fourth floor of the Veterans Hospital in Central City, survivors of a successful coup and victors over the monsters that lived underneath their noses.  
  
Riza reasoned that when you spend so much time with someone, you get to know them to their core. Riza knew Roy was ruminating. But if he was contemplating his thoughts in his dark world, that was just another sign that he was _alive_. She could live with him replaying their timeline over and over for a bit, so long as he didn’t stay there for too long. But if he did, she’d be the one to haul him back to the light, with or without his eyesight.

* * *

  
Taking a voluntary vow of silence had its perks. As he studied the material that Braeda read aloud to him, she studied too. Riza was able to absorb and retain as much information about Ishval as Roy did, probably more because her recall was better. It was a good thing she’d be going with him to the desert to guide him along the way- not that she’d let him go without her in the first place, but he was definitely going to need some help out there if he couldn’t remember what ‘dual cropping’ was.  
  
Falman had brought her some books, Fuery brought in a picture of Hayate that he’d taken, Braeda brought her some homemade coffee truffles, and Rebecca had brought her a much-too-fluffy housecoat and slippers to wear. Marcoh arrived with a philosopher’s stone, saying that using the stone to restore his sight would be his contribution for his own crimes in Ishval, and that he would do whatever he could to help.  
  
That made Riza happy, to know that everyone who had a hand in the slaughter of the Ishvalans was deeply remorseful for their part in it. But what Roy said afterward had warmed her to her soul.  
  
“There’s someone else who needs that stone even more than I do.”  
  
He insisted that Havoc’s paralysis be cured before he would even think of accepting the cure for his vision, and Riza was almost beside herself with pride- and love. That part surprised her. No, she’d always known that she loved him to some degree. But it wasn’t until that moment she knew just how much.  
  
Braeda seemed in a hurry to get down to the phone bank and call his best pal to tell him the good news. Ross, Knox, Fuery and Falman smiled at the blind man in the bed who was thanking Dr. Marcoh for his contribution and assistance, and Riza had to bite the insides of her cheeks to keep her tears of happiness back. He was finally getting the military’s eye for a good reason. She had no doubt that in a year, most of Ishval would be restored and Roy might finally live up to the nickname he hated so much, ‘The Hero of Ishval’.

* * *

  
The night before Havoc arrived to be treated, Riza found herself unable to sleep from anxiousness. She was excited to see him, eager to find out if he could be healed with the stone, and impatient for Roy to get his sight back. She sensed he was just as keyed up as she was, but didn't bother him. Maybe he was trying to calm himself down by thinking about other things. Maybe she should follow suit and try it herself.  
  
Just as she closed her eyes, he said quietly, “What do you intend, once we’re released?”  
  
That caught her off guard. “What do you mean, sir?” she questioned in return, her voice barely above a whisper.  
  
“You still mean to watch my back?”  
  
While she couldn’t read his expression, his question was easy for her to answer. “Unless you’re rescinding the order for me to do so.”  
  
He immediately responded, “No.”  
  
She grinned to herself. “Then yes, I will continue to watch your back, sir,” she answered in a soothing and reassuring tone.  
  
He nearly sneered back, “Don’t call me that.” Riza frowned, watching as he winced at his own tone.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Sir,” he said gentler. “We’re alone here, Lieutenant. You can use my name.”  
  
Ah. “He says, as he calls me by my rank.”  
  
A lopsided grin formed on his mouth. “Point taken.”  
  
Riza isn’t sure if it’s the lighting in the room making him look young as he did when he first came to stay with her and her father, the feeling of an incomplete thought he’d raised with his mention of calling him by his name, or if the feelings she’d been (re)discovering for him in their room were crying out for some kind of admission from her, but Riza decided to tell him once and for all why she joined the army in the first place.  
  
“Do you remember when we went to Resembool?” she asked him.  
  
“To recruit Fullmetal, you mean?”  
  
She nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see that. “Yes. You were closeted in with him and Madam Pinako for a long time.”  
  
“What of it?” Roy asked, almost defensively.  
  
“I sat with the girl. Winry. You remember her.”  
  
Roy chuckled through his nose. “Sure. Fullmetal’s in love with her, doesn’t like to say so.”  
  
Riza wholeheartedly agreed, saying, “Yes. We had a talk about the military, and how she didn’t like soldiers.”  
  
He furrowed his brows and turned his head toward her. “Uh-huh…”  
  
She folded her hands in her lap saying, “I told her I don’t always like being a soldier. I don’t like having to kill people.”  
  
“Then why do you?” He sounded almost hurt by her decision to do something she doesn’t truly want to do.  
  
“That’s what she asked.”  
  
“What did you say?”  
  
Her hands slid apart and her fingers clenched the blanket instead. Her voice was strong, full of conviction as she answered, “I told her that I do because,” she paused, forcing her fingers to relax. “There’s someone I need to protect. No one forces me to pull the trigger. I have to do it until he reaches his goal. I have to protect him.”  
  
The silence that spanned between them made her think that perhaps he was ruminating again, blaming himself for her choice, damning himself for enlisting in the army in the first place, wishing he hadn’t been born with the ability to do alchemy at all-  
  
“You’ve never told me that before,” he murmured.  
  
“No,” she replied.  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Did it need to be said, sir?”  
  
Though he couldn’t see her, he turned his head away from her anyway. They sat in silence again, and again, Riza thought she could hear the working of the gears in his head in the quiet dimness of the room. A nurse came in to administer night medicine to each of them, then clicked the lights off. She’d been gone a few minutes when Roy’s voice spoke up again.  
  
“Lieutenant.”  
  
“Colonel,” she answered, her voice as cool and professional as it had always been in their office.  
  
“You once asked me not to go where you couldn’t follow.”  
  
So he had been ruminating a little. “That’s correct.”  
  
“Is there anywhere you won’t follow me?”  
  
Riza thought for a moment. She’d told him originally she’d follow him into hell, and they’d already been to hell and back. “Not as long as you stay on the path that we discussed when you first made me your subordinate.”  
  
She could hear him turning over in his bed. “Suppose I gave you a new order, then.”  
  
“Sir?” she asked, her voice surprised.  
  
“Instead of following me, perhaps you’d walk beside me?”  
  
His comment stirred her already churning stomach and made her face feel hot. She answered him as calmly as possible, “I can’t watch your back if I’m beside you.”  
  
He sounded peaceful and calm as he replied, “I am willing to take that chance.”  
  
“I don’t know if I am…” she replied, thinking ahead and wondering if she’d have to call him back from the edge of madness like she did only a few days ago.  
  
“Oh, but Elizabeth,” he called out dramatically, "I’m absolutely _desolate_ without you beside me! You’re still my very favorite of all the ladies on my list, you know!”  
  
She bit back on a chuckle, only because she hadn’t been cleared to use her voice so strenuously yet. “You still owe me a fishing trip,” she said, hearing the smile in her voice as the words came out. She could see his chest shaking silently as he suppressed a laugh as well. But the mirth of the situation was gone too quickly, and his seriousness crept back into their conversation.  
  
“I owe you more than that.”  
  
Shaking her head, Riza replied, “You don’t own me anything.”  
  
“I want to give you everything.” She watched as he lifted his hands up, as if he were looking at them through his darkened eyes. They fell back to the bed and he said sternly, “Your new orders are to cease walking behind me and watching my back.”  
  
Riza couldn’t hold back the gasp that fell from her lips. Mentally, she floundered a bit as he continued, “I expect to be Fuhrer in another several years. I am going to need a First Lady on whom I can thoroughly rely.” His head turned toward her. “Who else can I trust in that position but my queen?”  
  
Roy Mustang, a man she had been tied to for almost twenty years in some form or another, just ordered her to marry him. To spend the rest of her life with him. To walk beside him as a lover. She really shouldn’t have been so surprised. After all, she could read him like a book.  
  
“I see,” she replied thoughtfully.  
  
“Will you do me the honor, then?”  
  
His voice is hopeful, and Riza couldn’t deny the gut instinct raging throughout her body, demanding for her to agree and give in… After all, didn’t her daydreams as a young woman imagine this very question being asked of her? By him?  
  
She let her imagination carry her away for a moment, rose colored visions of what the future might hold for her under the name of Riza _Mustang_ , what their lives would look like at that point…  
  
She smiled to herself, then turned her head toward him. “Yes, sir.” She can almost feel his relief at her response.  
  
“Very good. Your commitment is appreciated.”  
  
Riza was pretty sure that was the stiffest ‘thank you’ she’d ever heard. “I intend to still watch your back Colonel.”  
  
“If you insist,” he replied, and she imagined him lying there grinning up at the ceiling.  
  
Without realizing the weight of the words, she replied, “I do.”  
  
“The Eyes of the Hawk remain on me, then?”  
  
“Always.” And she meant it.  
  
Without warning, he sat up and swung his feet over the edge of the bed and stood up. “Are you watching now?” he asked, sliding first one foot carefully across the floor, then the other, his bandaged hands in front of him and pawing helplessly.  
  
“Sir, what are you doing?” she asked as she got to her feet as well. She took two sure steps and reached him before he could trip and hurt himself. When her hands gently grabbed his, he stopped and stood still, his eyes open but seeing nothing. “You shouldn’t be out of bed, it’s dangerous.” She held him by his biceps, perhaps maybe for the first time ever. She didn’t realize how strong they were, or how warm…  
  
“ _Riza…_ ” he whispered.  
  
All at once, her face felt on fire. She didn’t respond to him, instead she watched as his hands traveled up her own arms to her shoulders, touching carefully at the bandages around her neck. His fingers touched her hair and ears, and he whispered, “Stay very still.”  
  
Apart from her heart pounding out of her chest, she did as he said. His hands moved to cup her face, and he rested his forehead against hers. His nose briefly nuzzled hers, and Riza managed to close her eyes just before his lips kissed her as sweetly as she imagined he would in all her childish daydreams. His arms slipped around her waist and Riza let him hold her as tightly as he wanted.  
  
She couldn’t say how long they stood there that way, embracing each other and holding that first kiss. When Roy pulled away from her, he combed his fingers through her hair a few times.  
  
“Thank you, for everything you’ve given me. I can never repay you, but I’ll spend the rest of my life trying.”  
  
She shook her head as she laid her chin on his shoulder. “No need, Roy. Just get back into bed before the nurse comes and births a calf.”  
  
He chuckled. “Alright.”  
  
Once she managed to get them both safely back into bed, Roy spoke up again.  
  
“Riza?”  
  
“Roy?”  
  
“I think I love you.”  
  
“I should hope so, sir. Especially since you ordered me to be at your side.”  
  
“You could have refused,” he said, likely pouting. “You’ve refused orders from me before.”  
  
She smiled. “I’m not refusing this one.”  
  
He let out a content sigh. “Thank goodness.”  
  
This time, Riza didn’t have to worry if he’d actually fallen asleep. His breath was even and peaceful, just like when she’d catch him napping at his desk. For the first time in a week, she found rest as well.


End file.
